Attempts at touch screen control of cameras has simplified many aspects of camera control. While touch screen control can be intuitive it has the disadvantage of requiring the user to touch the camera screen to implement a desired control change. The user motion associated with touching a screen which is part of a camera device can cause unintended motion of the camera device. Accordingly, while convenient, touch screen control can be disruptive and introduce unintended motion such as camera shake and/or tilting or change in camera angle if implemented while a handheld camera is capturing an image or images, e.g., as part of a video sequence or while taking one or more still frames. In addition, the touch screen soft controls/buttons offer no tactile feedback forcing the user to focus on at that part of the screen where the controls are located taking away attention from the subject of the photograph or video.
To implement zoom control, rather than use a touch screen control, in many digital cameras a toggle type control is used. Such a toggle switch is generally conveniently located near the finger tips while holding or griping the camera in the intended manner. In such cameras depressing or moving the toggle switch in one direction is used to cause the camera to zoom in at a fixed rate while depressing or moving the toggle in the opposite direction causes the camera to zoom out at a fixed rate. Sometimes the toggle switch is implemented as a pair of switches where pressing one switch causes the camera to zoom out while pressing the other causes the camera to zoom in. While pressing such switches may result in only minimal camera shake, the resulting control is not adequate and not precise as there is no way to control the rate of zooming.
In view of the above discussion, it should be appreciated that there is a need for methods and apparatus for controlling camera zoom which are less likely to cause unintended camera motion or camera shake while providing adequate and precise control of the amount and the rate of zooming. It would be desirable if at least some new zoom control methods could be developed which would allow a camera user to adequately control zoom operations in an intuitive way while minimizing any unintended camera motion or shake while doing so.